


life without your water is a burning hell

by lovely_ericas



Category: Dance Academy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovely_ericas/pseuds/lovely_ericas
Summary: As the days shake into weeks and the weeks into months, ballet belongs exclusively to Abigail again. She thinks this is a victory, a relief. She is wrong.





	life without your water is a burning hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astralis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralis/gifts).



It’s not that she enjoys Tara’s pain. As the days shake into weeks and the weeks into months, ballet belongs exclusively to Abigail again. She thinks this is a victory, a relief. She is wrong.

She keeps in touch with the others as they scatter away but Ollie is the one by her side nearly every waking moment when they aren’t dancing. Abigail hadn’t known whether the closeness of third year had been brought about solely by the circumstances surrounding Sammy’s death, hadn’t known whether it would last in such a different environment. Oh, she cultivates a few other friends among the corps, Eloise and Jason and Maya, but these are shallow friends, of less significance even than Grace had been. Without Ollie, she thinks she would be sunk.

Being in the corps is the hardest work Abigail has ever done. She had expected it, of course, but the expecting didn’t make the work any less arduous. There is no Tara to lose her focus on, to drag her away from where her energy should be. No, instead, she is surrounded by talented dancers, dancers who care nothing about her and wouldn’t know her from the girls on either side of her. It doesn’t stop Abigail for working hard but the only person she can lash out at it is herself. That had always been an important value of Tara, for all her many, many flaws. Hating Tara, hating the world for catering to Tara, for loving Tara; it was easy than if not to love herself than certainly not to hate herself. 

Tara starts university and to cover the cost a bit and to have spending money and rent money, she gets a job. Specifically, a job catering at the Sydney Opera House.

“You want to work in full view of the site of your fall.” Abigail says flatly. It’s not a question. She doesn’t understand how Tara’s mind works at all.

“I have good memories here too,” Tara protests with that bouncy lightness she always seems to have, no matter how much Abigail attempts to drag into the real world. “The Prix de Fonteyn.”

Abigail gives her another look. Has Tara already romanticized Grace screwing her over at the Prix?

Tara giggles a little and plays with her bag. “It’s, it’s like riding. After you fall, you have to get back up on the horse.” Abigail never had a horse phase like some girls because she’s always been wholly focused on ballet but although she knows Tara’s words are objectively true, she also knows Tara is lying about it being okay.

It’s not too long after that that Ollie begins to talk about pursuing his music career and leaving the Company. He’s not untalented but Abigail doesn’t understand why he would throw away the ( _grueling, painful_ ) success of what he has already to have to build himself up right from the very bottom. She doesn’t want him to leave for other, more selfish reasons. Reasons like he’s her strongest link to Sammy, her truest friend, and without him, her shallower friends in the corps will crumble away and she’ll be alone. Not that Abigail needs him. Or anyone else. She only needs ballet. 

“I’ve done it!” Ollie shouts. He hugs her hard, lifting her off her feet. 

“What have you done?” She asks with a perverse interest.

“I’ve booked my ticket.” He shows her the printout. The departure date for the flight is next week. One way. “Los Angeles, here I come, baby!” Ollie says with glee, full of all the excitement Abigail won’t ( _can’t_ ) muster. 

“Where will you stay?” Abigail asks, harshly, crossing her arms over her chest.

But no respite lies that way. Ollie has everything figured out. He’s found roommates who need someone to fill their bit of the rent while their absent friend’s room is vacant for a month and a half. After that, Ollie will be on his own.

She says, “Congratulations”, dully, without sincerity. But she doesn’t accompany Ollie to the airport, doesn’t help him pack, doesn’t remind him to keep in touch. She pulls away from him even before he leaves.

With Ollie gone, it’s no surprise that her other friends in the corps begin to drop away. First Maya, then Jason, and finally even Eloise. Abigail throws herself even more wholeheartedly into ballet than she ever had before. All her time is taken up with stretches and croisés and fouettés. And again, and again and again ( _ad nauseam_ ). She eats and sleeps and remembers to drink water only because she must. 

In truth, she feels as though she’s burning, constantly on fire, too hot for anything to ever cool her down again, as though her fate is just to burn herself up.

~

Which is why when Christian suggests the lawsuit again, Abigail wastes precious energy trying to talk Tara into it. She isn’t the only one doing so, Tara’s parents strongly support the idea and Kat also thinks it’s a good idea. Ben is the only holdout. Abigail knows she isn’t the reason Tara decides to go through with it, she wouldn’t kid herself, but the time she spends rolling her eyes and pointing out why the lawsuit is the only good idea in Tara’s arsenal frees her mind from darker thoughts and her dancing improves even more.

When Madelyn approaches her, Abigail is sure she’s done something ( _something else_ ) wrong. But she’s wrong. Madelyn has a solo picked out for Abigail to dance and she’s going to announce it at the next Company sponsor’s dinner.

Finally, a solo made for her. Abigail thrills at the thought. Her pain has won her something. Something special for her. 

She feels light and airy all night at the dinner, knowing the words that are to come. She even feels magnanimous towards Tara, a rare feeling. 

As she later discovers, her solo isn’t the only big thing to come out of the night. Tara announces to Abigail and Christian that she intends to audition for the Company.

It’s the craziest thing Abigail has ever heard come out of Tara Webster’s mouth and Abigail has heard plenty of crazy things come out of Tara’s mouth. Yet even as she tells Tara this, a very small thought in the back of her mind she wants to ignore says that if anyone could manage the Herculean task, it’d be Tara.

She lets herself be sucked into drilling Tara. Abigail regains a sense of control she didn’t even realize she had been missing as she pushes Tara. Maybe it’s because Tara will let Abigail push her as far as Abigail demands. Tara trusts her and trust is something very essential in ballet that seems to have been lacking in Abigail’s life these days.

She even roots for Tara in auditions, pushing some nobody out of the way so that Tara can stand beside her at the barre. But the universe’s darling ( _finally_ ) doesn’t get what she wants.

~

Abigail loses track of Tara for a while. She knows from instagram that Tara is in New York with Kat but she focuses on dance. The Company is on tour which means an even harder, harsher regime then before.

In SoHo, the Company is set to dance one of Madelyn’s new choreographies when Eloise suffers a nervous collapse and has to be sent home to her mother. It’s exceedingly petty but Abigail allows herself just the smallest bit of schadenfreude that her former friend’s fortunes have abandoned her. This turns out to be a mistake because the next dancer to walk through the door into the studio is Tara. 

“You’re like a cockroach.” Abigail says. “You’re unsquashable.” She can see in Tara’s face that Tara’s unsure whether Abigail means this as a compliment or not. But Tara with her unsquashable optimism leans forward to hug Abigail, always seeing the good in her. Abigail feels something uncoil inside her gut.

Maybe ballet is better with a rival, she thinks. At least until Madelyn tells her to teach Tara and Kate her solo. She tells Tara and Tara throws it back in her face. Oh, she hates her. Perfect, pitying Tara too gracious to fight with her.

When Tara rushes away instead of finishing the performance, Abigail does her best ( _truly_ ) to explain and justify Tara’s absence to Madelyn as gleaned from the garbled bits of overheard one-sided conversation. Even as she apologizes for Tara, Abigail thinks she was not the one to leave in the middle of a performance. And if she had, she would surely be out of the Company for good, despite all her good track effort.

Ben is not Abigail’s favorite person. Nevertheless, she doesn’t want him to die. She makes her way to the hospital after the performance, finding Ollie, Kat, and Tara by his bedside.

Miss Raine finds them like that later. All of them ( _but not Sammy_ ), Christian too, back together. If Abigail believed in nonsense like fate, she might have thought fate had brought them all back together.

Abigail had thought that that would be the end of that particular chapter, that they would all once more scatter to the winds when Tara makes the most startling pronouncement of all.

“I still love ballet but,” Tara fumbles to explain how she feels.

And yet. Perhaps it’s not all that startling at all.

“She doesn’t want to be a dancer.” Abigail finishes.

It’s earthshattering and simple all together. That feeling Abigail had felt dancing Tara’s Hades and Persephone, dancing again with Ollie, dancing as a principal. This is the feeling Abigail wants again. A feeling she can’t have, could never have at the Company.

It’s Christian’s idea, actually. Of course, he has vested interest, wanting pupils to teach and to keep Tara close. 

Well, Abigail wants Tara close too. Someday she’ll learn to control that burning fire within her, keep it from scorching her, consuming her. For now, there’s Tara. Cooling, calming, frustrating, infuriating Tara.


End file.
